Skip to main content
BFI logo

Home

Film

Television

People

History

Education

Tours

Help

  search

Search

Screenonline banner
Marx for Beginners (1979)
 

Synopsis

Warning: screenonline full synopses contain 'spoilers' which give away key plot points. Don't read on if you don't want to know the ending!

A woman in a library reads the book 'Marx for Beginners' and talks of the supposed difficulty of summarising and explaining Marx for 'simple minds'. The film then moves quickly through the growth and development of religion, philosophy and science in history: cavemen, Egyptians, Greeks, the 'Age of Faith', the Renaissance, and the Age of Reason. The 'working man' through history then encounters Karl Marx, who explains the growth of capitalism. An industrialist - represented as a pig - employs the working man to make commodities; Marx explains how profits are earned on his labour. Throughout the film a woman repeatedly appears to ask, "What about me?", but is ignored.